Presidential motorcades are a royal pain in the butt

"You have to be one arrogant SOB to go anywhere for publicity’s sake as president and cause that kind of inconvenience for working people." - driver

Chris Christie and Barack Obama in Asbury Park. (EPA/Justin Lane)

John Steigerwald is an old high school friend of mine from Toms River.

These days he heads a rock group called the River Dogs. His day job is doing furniture repair.

On Tuesday morning, he had just finished a job in Spring Lake and was heading south to Manasquan for another job. He got as far as Sea Girt, where he found himself stuck in traffic just a couple blocks from the Route 71 intersection. President Obama had landed by helicopter at the National Guard camp just a few minutes earlier. His motorcade had taken a surprise trip to Point Pleasant Beach, where he played boardwalk games with Gov. Chris Christie.

Since Obama had gone south, Steigerwald reasoned, the highway to the north would soon be opening up. Or so he hoped.

"Finally a cop came along and said it’s gonna be two to three hours," he said. "The cop said maybe I could get through up in Belmar."

That set him off on a wild goose chase. Even though Obama would not be returning north to Asbury Park for an hour, Route 71 remained shut all the way, trapping Steigerwald and every other driver between the highway and the deep blue sea.

"The only way out was to swim out in the ocean at Spring Lake and come in the Manasquan Inlet," he said. His truck is not amphibious, however, so Steigerwald had to write off more than $300 in canceled appointments.

"Now, I don’t care if it’s Obama, Bush, Clinton or Reagan; you have to be one arrogant SOB to go anywhere for publicity’s sake as president and cause that kind of inconvenience for working people," he said.

It certainly seems that way to me. Over the years these presidential motorcades have become more and more imperial in nature. They are not the sort of thing citizens of a free country should have to endure. After all, it’s not as if these guys are royalty.

I mean that literally. Actual royals travel in a much less ostentatious manner. I found that out in 2005, when The Star-Ledger sent me to London to cover the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

As soon as I landed, I headed over to Buckingham Palace. I saw several other journalists hanging around at the entrance to the prince’s residence, so I joined the crowd.

Before long, the prince’s car arrived. I’d expected a Rolls-Royce limo, but it was a mere Audi sedan. Charles was sitting in the back seat. Behind his car was one chase vehicle. That was the entire entourage.

If a prince can get by with two cars, why does a president need 20? And why does he need to pester people with real jobs when he’s just going to the boardwalk to play games?

The Secret Service didn’t return my calls, so I decided to put in a call to a couple of real experts on the subject, Maurice Carroll and his son Mike.

Maurice is a former reporter for several New York newspapers who now heads the Quinnipiac Poll. In November 1963, he got to Dallas just in time to witness Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot. The Secret Service had left security to the Dallas police and "they were clearly overwhelmed," said Carroll. "They let 150 reporters in."

They also let Jack Ruby in, carrying the pistol with which he shot Oswald. So that system was clearly in need of improvement.

By 1984, Mike Carroll was a young Reagan volunteer driving a press car in the Reagan motorcade.

"We came in from Morristown and drove all the way to Newark," recalls Mike, who is now a Republican assemblyman from Morris County. "When we got within sight of Newark airport, we got stuck in traffic for five to 10 minutes."

A president stuck in traffic? Those were the good old days. That was a mere campaign appearance, so there was no justification for shutting down the roads.

These days, the president is running what amounts to a permanent campaign, whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican. So here’s my suggestion for the chief executive: If you can’t get there by helicopter, don’t go.

As for my fellow alumnus of Monsignor Donovan High School, he has this advice:

"Send money and help and make some speeches," said Steigerwald. "But stay the hell in Washington!"